Beneath the Fallen City, Jamie A. Waters [ebook reader .TXT] 📗

room when Carl entered with Kayla in his arms. The moment he laid her on the examination table, activity erupted around him. Jinx bent down and cut off her jacket while Zane grabbed the I.V. and inserted the needle into Kayla’s arm. Jinx glanced at the monitor readings with a frown. “Her blood pressure is dropping.”

Carl grabbed a pouch of synthetic blood and handed it to Zane, who immediately hooked it up to the I.V. along with the saline solution. Jinx jerked open one of the drawers and pulled out a needle. She slid the needle into the I.V. and pushed a clear liquid through the line.

“What are you giving her?” Veridian leaned forward, peering over Jinx’s shoulder.

“Just something to help boost her blood pressure,” Jinx explained without looking away from the monitor. As soon as Kayla’s blood pressure stabilized and her vital signs moved into a more acceptable range, Jinx gave her another injection. “This is a metabolic booster. It’ll speed up her healing rate.”

Carl adjusted the scanner hanging on the wall. “Everyone step back for a minute.”

Zane and Jinx moved away from Kayla while Carl activated the scanner. A thin beam of light moved over her form and then beeped loudly. Carl studied the images that flashed on the screen.

“She’s got a concussion. Her left wrist is fractured, and it looks like she has two cracked ribs. With the head wound too… This was way too close.”

Carl gripped the edge of the counter and took a deep breath. It was his fault this happened. He’d known Ramiro was unbalanced since he witnessed his reaction to her in his office. He could have pushed OmniLab harder to step in immediately. Instead, he wasted time playing games trying to get her to open up to him.

Jinx put her hand on Carl’s arm. “It could have been worse. We can fix those. She’ll be okay, Carl. You got to her in time.”

A chair squeaked across the floor. Carl turned to see Veridian sit beside the medical bed. The younger man stroked Kayla’s hair and kissed her forehead, whispering reassuring words in her ear.

Carl felt a pang of jealousy at the display of tenderness. He longed to be the one next to her, but he hadn’t earned that right. He might not be able to erase what happened, but he could make sure Ramiro never hurt anyone again.

Determination in his gaze, he declared, “It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.” He pressed the button on his commlink. “Xantham, what have you learned?”

“Just a second, Boss. I’ll be right there.”

A minute later, Xantham appeared. When he saw Kayla, his eyes widened in shock. “Holy shit. What the hell did he do to her?”

“From the looks of it, he smacked her around and tried to strangle her,” Zane said in a dry voice and crossed his arms over his chest. “But it looked like Kayla was able to drop the bastard before he could finish the job.”

“Oh man.”

Carl turned to him. “What did you find out?”

Xantham tore his eyes away from Kayla. “Ramiro didn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he sent Vex. Vex had been camping right outside the range of our perimeter. They locked onto her bike signal as soon as she left. Ramiro told him to make it look like an accident.”

Carl’s eyes hardened. “Did he say anything else?”

Xantham looked uncomfortable. “Vex… uh, laughed and said the little whore was going to meet the same end as her boyfriend. Ramiro’s been freaking out for the past hour since Vex stopped transmitting.”

“Tell me you have it recorded.”

“Yeah, but Boss, I don’t think OmniLab will be real happy if they find out I hacked into Ramiro’s comms.”

“I don’t care,” Carl dismissed his concerns. Playing by the straight and narrow hadn’t prevented two people from dying and another from being seriously injured. “You acted on my orders. I’m sending the recording to OmniLab. He’s not getting away with this.”

Xantham nodded. Jinx waved her hands, motioning everyone toward the door. “Everyone out except Veridian. I need to put on the bone molds and get her cleaned up.”

“I’m staying,” Carl said firmly.

Jinx frowned. As the crew trickled out, Jinx said, “Fine. But you don’t need to watch. She deserves some privacy after what she’s been through.”

Carl obediently averted his eyes while Veridian and Jinx undressed Kayla and cleaned her wounds. After Jinx wrapped her ribs with the bone molds, Veridian pulled a blanket over Kayla. “Okay, Carl. We’re done.”

Carl turned back around. Kayla’s dark hair fell around her face and was still damp from where Jinx had washed the blood out of it. Her eyes were closed, and she looked extraordinarily pale. The bruises around her neck were darkening. Carl could see the outline of where Vex’s fingers had gripped her.

Jinx pointed to the bone mold on the counter. “Carl, would you mind putting that on her wrist?”

He nodded and gently lifted Kayla’s hand to wrap her wrist in the mold. Jinx adjusted the I.V. “It’ll take a few hours for the bone molds to finish regenerating her bones. She’ll need at least one more bag of synthetic blood, but at least her vitals are stable now. With that concussion, she’ll probably be confused when she wakes up. I don’t want to give her a painkiller until then. Right now, being unconscious is the best thing for her.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Carl offered.

“In that case, I’m going to go get rid of these clothes. We’re going to need to get her some more UV gear. These are trashed.”

“That’s fine. I’ll arrange it.” It was the least he could do. Hell, he’d buy her a new speeder if he thought it would make it up to her.

Jinx stepped out of the room, carrying the ruined clothes. Veridian held Kayla’s uninjured hand and watched her silently. Carl pulled up another chair and sat on the other side of Kayla. He put his head in his hands and sighed.

“So what happens now?”

He glanced up to see Veridian’s worried expression. “I’ll send the recording to OmniLab. They need to know what happened. They have an obligation to protect her as part of the contract.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded. OmniLab should never have put Ramiro into a position of authority.

“She won’t get into any trouble over killing Vex, will she?”

Carl shook his head. He’d make sure of it. “No. There’s no doubt she was simply defending herself.”

“I’d love to be alone with Ramiro for five minutes right now.”

Carl nodded in agreement. “You’re not the only one.”

They both fell silent for several minutes. “She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up and sees this. She hates being sick or injured.”

Carl’s mouth twisted into a smile, remembering how she’d objected to using the medicinal cream. “I believe it.”

“Thanks for going down to get her. Most traders wouldn’t have done that.”

“I don’t think she would have been down there if it weren’t for me,” Carl admitted in frustration. “I gave her the scotch hoping to get her to open up and talk to me about Pretz. I knew there was more to the story than she originally told me. I should have waited for her to come around in her own time.”

Veridian shook his head. “I’m not sure about that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m angry this happened, but I don’t know about the rest. It’s been a year, and she hasn’t opened up about Pretz. Tonight was the first time I actually saw her cry. She’s kept all those feelings bottled up for a long time. She needed to let them out.”

“She told me she loved him.”

Veridian looked at him in surprise and then considered Kayla thoughtfully. “She never told me that. I knew she cared about him, but I didn’t realize…” His voice trailed off, indecision playing across his face. After a long moment, he said, “She can sometimes come across as being a sarcastic hard-ass, but that’s not who she is. Kayla’s got one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever seen. She’s either been hurt or has lost everyone she’s ever cared about. She doesn’t like to let people get too close.”

Carl raised an eyebrow, surprised at the volunteered information. From everything he’d seen, Veridian was a staunch defender of Kayla’s privacy. Wondering where this sudden loquaciousness was coming from, he observed, “She seems to be close to you.”

“I guess, but I’ve hurt her too. After my mother died, Kayla needed me and I wasn’t there for her. She turned to Pretz instead.”

“Kayla was close to her?”

Veridian rubbed Kayla’s hand and didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quiet. “Yeah. Kayla grew up in our camp. There was some sort of collapse in the ruins when she was a kid. Leo and my mother heard screams and went to investigate. Several people were down there when the beams fell. One of the women in the group was badly hurt but conscious. When she saw Leo and my mother, she pushed Kayla through a small opening and begged my mother to take her. My mother pulled Kayla out right before another beam fell. Leo and my mother were lucky to make it out of there alive.”

“What the hell were they doing taking a kid into the ruins?” Carl had difficulty imagining taking a child down into the ruins. There were far too many dangers.

Veridian shrugged. “She was a little young, but it’s not that unusual. We have to learn sometime. Leo tried to find out what camp she was from. He asked some other scavengers, but no one seemed to know anything about them. He gave up and figured they were new to the area, maybe starting a new camp.”

“I wasn’t much older than Kayla when she came to